Re: Open source vs opencore

I do not want to bet against closed options: some are valid (including the one proposed by Odoo SA) and we would probably be able to find as many success stories as failures in any of the situations.

We cannot generalize a situation or opinion based on selected example. Nevertheless, this kind of change is not to be taken lightly by any of the actors in the eco-system as the impact and risks are considerable and might well out-weight any short term income.

an other thing that more generally never worked as far as I know is a truly GNU licensed open source project trying to become less open touching its license, open core or anything else less open. As far as I know it always lost again the open source forks when the software is mature at least in some markets. Eventually in cases such as Compiere/Adempiere, the proprietary fork died and the open source fork, despite doing a bit better didn't go too far either when the software hasn't such a sustainable open source technology or a weak community. But as for OpenERP/Odoo, the community is very strong, has a proven sustainable business model and as of v8/v9 the Odoo codebase is becoming decent for an open source project of this size.Any resounding counter example?

Now, it's not because something will fail overall that it may not be chosen... You have to consider the local interests of every shareholders... Eventually admitting open core will fail upfront may probably immediately destroy all the company valuation, while letting investors believe it may work may lead to a smaller value destruction or even eventually a local benefit for the original project leaders or people who will exit before the bubble collapse.

As you said it will not work (bet taken and from a few years already), but the question is who will pay the bill: the investors alone, the community, the investors and the initial project leaders? Bet taken again ;-) But in any case not too worrying for the enlighten users and the enlighten system integrators.